


(In the Shadow of) Great Times

by bleeb



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Steve Rogers vs the 21st Century
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2019-11-08 11:39:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17980622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleeb/pseuds/bleeb
Summary: Relearning how to be a civilian.----------------------------------------------------------"We are like people at a wayside station, waiting between trains, or between planes.We attend the cinema, consult our watches.We sit down and stretch our legs, stare at the skylight.We buy a paper and read it without comprehending.Noticing the whistles blowing, the crowds coming and going.We listen for the porter to call sonorously the panel of destinations.Decorously the clock ticks; we await the roar of the transport”----------------------------------------------------------The Asset was not waiting for extraction. He knew extraction was not coming. He had not been meant to survive the mission— after its success he would no longer be needed. The handlers did not explain why. He did not need to know.So when everything went to hell, he knew that there was no team standing by to pick him up, and he had not received orders to report back to anyone or anywhere. It was likely that there was nothing left to report back to. Hydra will have scattered, at least for now.So the Asset would disappear.





	1. Waiting between trains, or between planes

**Author's Note:**

> Haven't written fanfic in a long time. I was planning on finishing the whole fic before posting, but I guess I wanted to know if anyone would be interested before I did.
> 
> It's also very much a post-TWS fic, which people might be tired of, but it's a trope I really like, so let's pretend it's still 2014, shall we?

“In the Shadow of Great Times”

 

 

> “We are like people at a wayside station, waiting between trains, or between planes.
> 
> We attend the cinema, consult our watches.
> 
> We sit down and stretch our legs, stare at the skylight.
> 
> We buy a paper and read it without comprehending.
> 
>  
> 
> Noticing the whistles blowing, the crowds coming and going, We listen for the porter to call sonorously the panel of destinations.
> 
>  
> 
> Decorously the clock ticks; we await the roar of the transport”

_Helen Goldbaum_

* * *

 He liked Marvin Gaye, Steve thought, lying in his hospital bed. It still sounded odd— most music did, he supposed that’s what happened when you miss 70 years of context— but it wasn’t as jarring as some of the other stuff people listened to in the future ( _present, Steve, in the present_ ). He still almost always found the most recent popular music to be fairly upsetting, but he was working on at least pretending to enjoy it (the same way he pretended to enjoy movies, which were all too bright and loud and oddly smoothed out, and food, which tasted so rich and chemical and bizarre, and clothing, and furniture, and television, and baseball, and—). No amount of pretending had gotten the old man jokes to stop, but Steve was going to act like a normal person until either he became one or everyone forgot that he wasn’t. He knew that his stubbornness was a source of irritation for Stark Jr, ( _Tony, call him Tony)_ who had dragged him to a few parties in the months after the Battle of New York hoping for a reaction. He had learned what to expect quickly, but Steve had kept it together the first time entirely out of spite, waiting until he got back to his ugly SHIELD issue apartment to break down thinking about what Bucky would have said if he saw what passed for dancing nowadays.

God, Bucky. He was trying not to think about it, thinking about it hurt so much, and there wasn’t anything he could do, not from his hospital bed (there wasn’t anything he could do at all, he had already failed Bucky more than he ever thought possible. Bucky, who had never once failed him. Bucky would never have left his body in that godforsaken ravine, never in a million years). God, Bucky, and the look on his face, and the sound of him screaming— there was no recognition in his eyes, none at all, and Steve wished that they had both died seventy years ago. He wished it so badly that his soul ached with it.

Steve sighed and blinked up at the ceiling. There was no point dwelling on it. If God was real at all, he no longer had ears for Steve. He hadn’t in a long time.

“Hey, Sam, what else should I be listening to?”

 

* * *

 

The Asset was not waiting for extraction. He knew extraction was not coming. He had not been meant to survive the mission— after its success he would no longer be needed. The handlers did not explain why. He did not need to know.

So when everything went to hell, he knew that there was no team standing by to pick him up, and he had not received orders to report back to anyone or anywhere. It was likely that there was nothing left to report back to. Hydra will have scattered, at least for now.

So the Asset would disappear.

He had few remaining weapons— no guns had survived the dive into the river, so all he had left were a handful of knives. His tac gear was soaked in blood and foul water. He was unsure whether any of his ribs were still intact. He needed money, new clothes, and to clean up before a civilian saw him and called the police.

Phase one of the Asset’s plan was to walk as far as he could stand to from the body on the shore, and then crawl into a bush and wait.

He wasn’t sure what was happening to him. He had never— he had watched The Man fall, and his body remembered falling. That happened sometimes, that his body remembered what had been wiped from his mind. He must have fallen out of a different plane on a different mission. Or maybe off of a building. There was— cold. Wind.

His body remembered The Man too. His Mission. He was familiar, but wrong. Uncanny. Off somehow. He felt those blue eyes in his gut. And his uniform was— ( _Are you keeping the outfit?_ ).

He watched from the dirt as emergency services arrived, and began dragging debris from the river. The blood and water from his clothes seeped into the ground and made mud that stuck to his body. As he sat, unmoving, the mud dried, caked to his gear, and hardened his hair into clumps. He was shaking. It was unclear why. It could have been cold, or drug withdrawal, or coming down from the adrenaline. It did not matter. He had sat perfectly still for much longer in much worse conditions on missions.

For a while, as he lied there, he went away— he saw the burning sun shimmering, reflecting off the sand, boiling him alive in his own skin, and felt the grit from sand in his eyes and all the crevices of his mouth, digging into the bullet wound in his thigh. He felt like a dead animal packed in salt and left to cure, he felt sure he would shrivel into a corpse and be buried under the sands, mummified by the elements and left there for all of time, still laying perfectly still, rifle in hand.

He didn’t know how long he spent in that desert in his mind. When he began to see with his own eyes again, it was dark.

 

The Asset dragged himself to his feet and began phase two of the plan.

Phase two went like this:

The Asset broke into a store. It was large, and seemed to sell everything a person could need— clothes for men, women, and children, along with food and pots and pans and linens and furniture and many many things the Asset did not recognize. This struck the Asset as strange, but he did not know what he thought a store should be like, and so he did not question it. Many things struck the Asset as strange. He never knew why. It was unproductive to dwell on it. At the store, he acquired a pair of pants made from a heavy blue fabric (the signs in the store called them “jeans”, but a voice in the asset’s head labeled them _waist overalls_. The Asset ignored this, as it was clearly useless gibberish. His mind occasionally spoke to him in gibberish, this is why he had to be wiped regularly, but he would not be wiped now. He must learn to ignore it.), as well as a “T-shirt” (he had no strange alternate name this time), a thick jacket, and plastic packs of underwear and socks. A black baseball cap. He kept the boots from his tac gear.

In addition to the clothes, the asset found a backpack, where he put the remaining pairs of socks and underwear, as well as cans of chicken and something labeled SPAM ( _Spam is a ham that didn’t pass it’s physical_ ), a box of crackers, a pack of gum, a tin of instant coffee, and a pack of cigarettes.

The Soldier stripped out of his tac gear in the bathroom and wiped as much of the blood off as he could with water and thin sheets of paper from a dispenser next to the sink. He rinsed his hair.

The Soldier frowned down into his bag. He wasn’t sure why he had— what did he need this stuff for? Had Hydra— he had never tasted coffee or gum or cigarettes. These things were not mission critical. But something told him this was— he needed— _standard issu_ e—

 

These were his things, and he would take them. If he couldn’t rely on his instinct he had nothing.

 

What else.

He grabbed a few plastic bottles labeled “Water” ( _bottled water? What’s wrong with the water?_ ) and one labeled “Coca Cola” full of a brown liquid. This, too, itched somewhere in his brain as _not quite right_ , but _almost_.

Before leaving the store, The Asset washed as much of the blood and dirt off of himself as he could in the bathroom, and changed into his new clothes. Time for Phase 3.

 

The Asset threw his tac gear into a dumpster a few blocks from the store. Now, recon.

 

He walked back towards downtown DC. He must have lost some time at some point, it was getting light out already. He needed to get access to a computer or a smartphone— maybe he could mug someone.

 

He found a mark easily— DC was full of men in suits talking on expensive-looking phones. He was crossing the street to catch up with the guy when he stopped dead. The Mission’s face was plastered to the side of a bus.

 

_Guess you don’t need that phone after all_

 

* * *

He had gone to the museum. It had been closed when he got there, so he waited outside. The museum was free, which was lucky, because he had yet to acquire any money. At 0830, a man came to unlock the doors, and the Asset waited until a good crowd had formed inside so that he would be less visible. He read everything in the room, then stared at the huge picture of a man who could be his twin, if he hadn’t been dead for 70 years. Then he read everything in the room again.

 

On his way out, he stole two books from the exhibit’s gift shop— a biography of the Mission (he could barely think over the voice screaming _Steve_ every time he looked at the man’s face. He didn’t know how he knew the name. It must have been in a past briefing, before the wipe. They had said that he had encountered The Man on another mission earlier in the week, before the wipe. He must have been briefed then. He wished it would stop screaming) and a biography of the man wearing his face.

 

James Buchanan Barnes.

 

He lost some time again, and came back to himself outside of the museum, walking. He needed money. Then transportation. He supposed it was back to his initial plan, mugging some businessman. It was not ideal. He would have to move quickly afterwards, to get as far away as possible before the police knew to look for him. The policemen themselves held no threat to him, but who knew who was listening to their communications. It was best to stay off the radar.

The Asset walked aimlessly, making a random turn every so often. He would find someone to mug, and then hotwire a car. From there he would pick a direction and drive, get as far from DC as he could. He ducked into an alley, when a voice stopped him cold.

“Soldat.”

The man was Hydra, but not a handler. He did not know how he knew. He was wearing a well-tailored suit, and his dark hair was gelled back. He had a stern expression, clearly shooting for authoritative. “Soldat, stand down and come with me.” The Asset could see the sweat building on his brow.

 

The man was afraid, and he had made a very grave mistake. Without The Chair, and the restraints, and— the idiot didn’t seem to even have a weapon— the man had no way to force his compliance. The Asset had no intention of being anyone else’s asset ever again. He would die first. He hadn’t known that until he looked into the man’s eyes, but he knew it now, better than he knew anything else.

All The Asset needed to do was walk calmly towards the man, reach out, and snap his neck. He hadn’t even tried to run. Not that it would have mattered.

The man had about a hundred dollars in cash in his wallet, as well as several credit cards. The Asset liberated these, the semi-automatic tucked into his waistband ( _fucking_ _idiot_ ) and the agent’s (apparently named Harvey Ware) drivers license. They looked similar enough— both white, around 30 years old, with dark hair— that at a glance the difference could be written off as a change of haircuts. Especially if the Asset grew out his facial hair.

It was early afternoon now, and the streets were fairly crowded. Not an ideal situation for disposing of a body. The Asset dragged the hydra agent’s corpse behind a dumpster and left it there— it would be discovered regardless, it was a waste of time to do anything more. And anyway, the Asset’s fingerprints weren’t in any known database.

The Asset stared at the body for a moment. This would not be the last time someone came for him. This man was the first, but there would be more. As long as there was Hydra, Hydra would look for him. And not only them: anyone who knew of him would get their hands on him if they could. He was a powerful weapon, and he would not be left un-wielded. He had to be ready to be found.

The Asset pried the dead man’s mouth open with his good arm, and reached into it with the flesh hand. It was weaker, but more sensitive. Better for things that required manual dexterity. He felt around the mouth— still warm and wet, and the Asset found it useful that he was unable to feel disgust— until he found a molar in the back that was not rooted to the gums. He pried it free with little effort, and pocketed the fake tooth. He would find time to replace one of his own with it when he next found somewhere inside to spend the night.

He should probably find a stronger drug to put inside it— who knew if cyanide would be enough to kill him.

 

The Asset would not be wielded again.


	2. We buy a paper and read it without comprehending

On his way out of DC, the Asset stopped at an ATM in a shopping mall to withdraw several thousand dollars from Harvey Ware’s credit cards.

 

The mall was strange, as most things were— the lights were bright and the floors and ceilings were a muted off-white. The walls were lined with storefronts, mostly clothes or electronics. Small kiosks were set up in the open central area selling phone cases and knickknacks, pretzels, something called CBD oil. There was one where children sat in oversized chairs and wore strange large goggles— the Asset observed them for a while and determined that the goggles contained a small screen of some sort, and the children were playing a game. 

At one end of the concourse a car was parked. Inside, right on the tile floor. The Asset was unable to discern the purpose of this, and was equally perplexed by the fact that the car would not have fit through the doors into the mall.

 

On the opposite side from the absurd car, there was a fenced-in area where small children ran around and screamed. There was a large plastic tree, which they climbed on, as well as a tube to crawl through and several seats, the sole purpose of which seemed to be to sit and spin yourself around as fast as possible. 

 

It was all incredibly alien.

 

The voice had nothing to say about any of it. 

 

The Asset liked the mall. 

 

 

* * *

 

Eventually The Asset has to move on. He hotwires a car in the parking lot, picks a random direction, and drives. 

 

He has money, but he doesn’t want to use Harvey Ware’s ID unless he has to, and he would have to use it to get a motel room, so he spends that night in the car. 

 

He doesn’t have a fork, so he eats a can of meat with one of his combat knives. 

 

While he was fishing around in his bag for something else to eat, The Asset was struck again by the oddity of the items that he had stolen. Why did he have a tin of instant coffee? He hadn’t gotten a cup. He had no way of heating water. And he had cigarettes, but no lighter. The gum, at least, was useable. It was good. Minty. 

 

The Asset reclined his seat, and pulled out his two books. He decided to start with the one about The Mission, instead of the one about the man wearing his face. (Or maybe he was wearing the man’s face?  _ He watches a man peel his own face off in a burning factory, and it’s red, blood red, inhuman--  _ stop thinking about people wearing faces, don’t think about faces at all, read the book--) 

 

Almost immediately, The Asset became very angry. 

 

“What the fuck is this horseshit?” he hissed to himself. 

 

Whatever fucking fat-head who wrote this didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. He was talking about Steve like he was some kinda invalid. Like he wasn’t nothing until Erskine and Howard Stark pumped him full of radiation and steroids. Like he was some frail kid who sat at home and drew pictures and minded his own business instead of a man who would fight the damn sun if he thought it looked at him funny.

 

He wanted a damn cigarette.

  
  


He stewed in his inexplicable anger for a while, glaring at the book in his lap, before he remembered about electric cigarette lighters. He pressed the button and waited for a second for it to heat up while he pulled a cigarette out of the package. 

 

The Asset smelled burning flesh in his mind when he pulled the lighter out of the socket and pressed his cigarette to it. He wasn’t sure if he was remembering being burned with one himself, or burning someone with one. Maybe both. He ignored it. 

 

He inhaled deeply and let the smoke trail out of his mouth. 

 

After a few minutes of deep breathing, he closed the book. He wasn’t sure where any of that came from, and it was already fading from his mind. He vaguely remembers being angry, but not what he was angry about. Why would he be angry about the contents of a biography of a man he's never really met? He would need to acquire a pen before he made another attempt. Keep a record.

 

And anyway, there was something else he needed to do tonight, more important than a little light reading. 

  
  


The Asset had certainly done more difficult and unpleasant things than pulling one of his own teeth with his bare hand. He could even see what he was doing thanks to the little mirror on the back of the car’s sun visor. He dropped his own tooth into the cup holder next to his stubbed out cigarette and stuffed Harvey Ware’s fake tooth into place. He would look out for something stronger, but the cyanide capsule was better than nothing for now. 

 

He reclined the seat as far back as it would go, and fell into a fitful sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

The next day he stops at a gas station to pick up a plastic lighter and a pen. While he’s inside, he buys a cup of coffee, sunglasses, and some brightly colored novelty shirts. Hiding in plain sight. Nobody would see a man wearing lime green sunglasses and a T-shirt with Abraham Lincoln drinking a beer and think “I bet that guy’s a wanted nazi assassin.”

Hopefully. 

  
  


When he stops for the night, he lights himself another cigarette. He’s parked in the lot of a rest stop, under the yellow-orange glow of a street light, with the car turned off and the window cracked to let the smoke escape. ( _ Get some fresh air in here,  _ the voice murmurs.  _ These ain’t asthma cigarettes, don’t wanna get Steve started coughing.)  _ The lot isn’t totally empty, but the only other people in it are a few men sleeping in their semi-trucks, and The Asset doesn’t register them as much of a threat. (Everything is at least a minor threat, but The Asset is working on distinguishing between Hydra Agents and, for example, the young family in line in front of him in the gas station.) 

 

He flips the Captain America biography open in his lap and reclines his chair, holding the cigarette in his good hand (closer to the window) and the pen in his left. 

 

He takes a long drag.

 

* * *

 

The Asset drives purposelessly for several days, stopping at night for food and a few hours sleep. He has to buy a few more packs of cigarettes. He finishes his book— large swathes of the beginning are just plain wrong, he knows without knowing, and so he draws large Xs over the pages, but he isn’t so sure what they should say instead. He makes a few notes in the margins, things his mind whispers to him when he closes his eyes and breathes deeply. The smells trigger something in him— tobacco and black coffee, dried blood and gasoline and mint flavored gum— and when he opens his eyes he finds things written in the margins.

 

_ Asthma cigarettes _

And 

_ The Lone Ranger _

And 

_ Moonlight Serenade _

 

He underlines the names that make him itch,  _ Jones _ and  _ Dugan _ and  _ Carter  _ and  _ Stark _ , but there are no more faces lurking in him. 

 

He still only remembers the one face. 

* * *

  
  


On the highway heading west out of Amarillo, Texas, he switches on the radio and the sound of the static sends him careening into a ditch on the side of the road. He comes back to himself crouched in the backseat with the stolen gun clenched in his flesh hand. It’s visibly shaking.

 

“Losing my edge,” he mutters to himself as he pushes his car back onto the road with his good arm. It’s a little worse for wear, but not too fucked. He’s driven worse. 

* * *

 

The next night, he ends up at the Grand Canyon. He knows when he parks the car that this was always his destination, but not why— there’s nothing in the biography of Captain America about the Grand Canyon, and he’d skimmed the biography of The Man Whose Body The Asset Took but there’s nothing in there either.

 

Nothing in the second book rings a bell at all, there isn't even the flicker of memories that he gets from things pertaining to The Captain. It gives him a headache to try, and he gives up after the second time he has to get out of the car and find somewhere to vomit. 

 

He doesn’t have any answers. His recon has failed. He only has more questions than he’d started out with, and they aren’t even fucking questions, they’re just— snippets of music and men’s laughter, dance steps and 

 

“ _...I should state therefore, that I, Anthony Rogers, am, so far as I know, the only man alive whose normal span of eighty-one years of life has been spread over a period of 573 years...” _

 

and

 

“ _ Keep smiling through, just like you always do, ‘til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away…” _

 

and 

 

“ _ Yesterday, December 7th, 1941-- a date which will live in infamy--” _

 

* * *

 

He had hoped that looking at the canyon itself would spark something in him. He knew now, sitting on this tower of sandstone in the dark, that that had been foolish. 

 

He had had to wait until night, as it was too hot in Arizona to wear a jacket outside inconspicuously. It was, of course, beautiful-- the Asset could recognize beauty in a way that he had never been able to before sitting here alone in the dark. He looked up at the infinite stars and out at the sea of jagged peaks, the layers of ancient mud and rock, and he thinks  _ it keeps coming back to rivers, don’t it, _ and he remembers dragging a body onto a riverbank, and he knows that it is beautiful. 

 

It’s so big, though, and the vast open air extends so far down and he remembers falling and falling, and lying numb in the snow and staring up at those stars thinking  _ He’ll come back for me, I know he will, he’s always come back for me _ \--

The Man in James Buchanan Barnes’ Body levered himself to his feet and marched back towards his car. 

 

He was going to get some fucking answers if it was the last thing he ever fucking did. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quotes are from Armageddon 2419 A.D. (a pulp sci fi novella by Philip Francis Nowlan from 1928, which later got turned into the comic strip Buck Rogers), the song We'll Meet Again by Vera Lynn, and Roosevelt's speech the day after Pearl Harbor, respectively.


	3. Some Sunny Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from We’ll Meet Again, the song referenced in the last chapter.

When Steve got back to his apartment after his morning run with Sam, he stopped dead in the hallway.

 

There was music playing inside his apartment.

 

_Not this shit again._

 

He turned right around and walked straight back the way he came, back down the stairs and outside, and around the corner to the side of his building.

 

 _Why does this keep happening to me_ , he griped to himself, jumping and grabbing onto the bottom of the fire escape. _I just want one month where nobody breaks into my apartment to play music on my damn record player._ He does a chin-up and twists himself over the railing, just like last time.

 

 _Last time._ Because now he had a _protocol_ for this nonsense. _I just got a new apartment,_ he thinks to himself as he slides the window open as quietly as he can and wedges himself into his own bathroom. _Please don’t wreck my apartment, it took me so long to put this furniture together._

 

The shield is by the front door, and whoever put a record on is between him and it, and he wishes that he had planned for this better. The odds of this being the second friendly to break into his place in a row are… not great. He imagines an entire Hydra strike team poised in his living room, with another set of mag cuffs and those damn stun batons, and he mourns the loss of his nice new carpet. Blood stains are hell to get out, and everyone would probably just tell him to get a new one. The 21st century is so _wasteful_. He takes a deep breath, and opens the bathroom door.

  
  


Except it’s not not a Hydra strike team, and it’s not Nick Fury bleeding on his furniture either.

 

It’s Bucky.

  


Bucky is back.

  


He’s crouched in front of the record player, his back to the room, watching it spin. He must know that Steve is there, but he doesn’t move at all. Steve takes a step forward, carefully making sure to make noise, so that Bucky will definitely know that he’s there. There’s still no reaction.

 

 _Maybe he’s really out of it,_ Steve worries. He hadn’t been able to sneak up on Bucky since Azzano-- he’s only now beginning to realize that Buck’s hearing is probably almost as good as his own. He should have been able to hear Steve open the window-- hell, he probably should have been able to hear Steve breathing outside on the fire escape. _Something’s really wrong._

 

“Bucky?”

 

His friend stiffens, and turns slowly, staying in his crouch. He’s got a handgun pointed at Steve.

 

Steve raises his hands cautiously but takes another step forward. “I’m not going to hurt you, Buck, I just want to help. Are you ok?”

 

“Stop.” A voice rasps. It sounds so rough that Steve would almost not recognize it as Bucky’s if he wasn’t staring intently at his lips. “Stay over there. You’re going to answer some questions for me.”

 

“Of course, Bucky, anything. I’ll tell you anything you need to know.” He took another step forward-- he needed to get close enough to make sure Bucky wasn’t injured or anything, he couldn’t see from this distance in the dark room. The gun remains pointed steadily at him, held in Bucky’s flesh arm, and the-- the _metal one_ whirrs softly. (Bucky’s _metal arm,_ jesus, can’t the future give him a break just one time?) He can see the plates shifting, shining in the low light.

 

“I said stop.”

 

“Buck, pal, I just want to help you. Are you hurt?”

 

Steve takes another step, and Bucky groans, clearly frustrated, and his eyes dart around the room wildly. Suddenly the gun isn’t trained on him anymore. Bucky has flipped it, and is holding it pressed to his own temple. Steve freezes in horror.

 

“You’re not listening to me. Step back,” Bucky rasps. Steve takes three big steps backwards, until his back hits the wall. He keeps his hands up where Buck can see them.

 

“Can you put the gun down, pal?” He asks softly. Bucky glares at him, and ignores the question.

 

“You’re going to answer some questions,” he repeats. He still has the gun pressed to his own head, like he’s holding himself hostage.

 

“Of course,” Steve says, letting himself slide down the wall to sit on the ground. He didn’t want Bucky to feel threatened, like Steve was looming over him. He also wasn’t sure how long his knees would last without buckling at this point. He wasn’t sure the last time he’d been this afraid. “Anything you need.”

 

Honestly, Bucky doesn’t look too bad. He seems to have been eating, anyway, and he’s surprisingly clean considering Steve’s pretty sure he’s been homeless. He’s wearing a shirt that says-- _“Don’t Meth With Arkansas”_?

There are two books stacked on Steve’s coffee table, next to a backpack. He recognizes the one on top, based on the picture of his big dumb face on the cover. He hated that biography. (He hated all the biographies.)

 

“So, you had questions?” Steve prompted after they had sat in silence for a few minutes. Bucky stared at him, and they spent another minute or so sitting in the gradually lightening room silently staring at each other. Steve, of course, broke first. “Did you read those books?” he ventured, glancing at the books on the coffee table. The second one, under Steve’s biography, was one of Bucky’s own.

 

“Yes,” Bucky mumbled, “it was-- they’re wrong. Why are they wrong?” There was no variation in the tone of his voice, no real emotion other than vaguely accusatory. As if Steve had written them himself, and lied about everything. Steve laughed softly to himself, although it sounded forced even to his own ears.

 

“Well, Buck, how long have you got?”

 

* * *

 

They sit together on the floor for a long time. Steve stumbles his way through an explanation of how people wrote most of the biographies about him before he woke up, and so they had never seen Steve outside of the Newsreels, let alone met anyone who knew him in life. “There’s only so much they could guess, Buck, so they made some stuff up,” he finished. Bucky did not seem satisfied with this answer.

 

“Fuckin’ geniuses,” he muttered to himself.

 

Then the next song started, and Bucky’s eyes snapped back to Steve. After that the questions were rapid fire-- “What is this song?” and “Who is Buck Rogers?” and “Why do cigarettes taste wrong now?” And Steve can feel his eyes widening as he answers. Does Bucky really remember all this stuff? Surely if he remembers a cartoon strip then he remembers the apartment they shared, right? Or at least some of their lives? _Maybe it’s been coming back, maybe he’ll remember everything and we’ll go back to the way things were._ For the first time since he woke up on that soundstage with the fake nurse and the old ball game on the radio, Steve thought _maybe everything’ll be ok._

  


He loses most of his hope when Buck opens his mouth again.

 

“I remember shooting people for you. Were you my first handler?” He doesn’t give Steve a moment to answer, steamrolling on-- “Why do I dream about falling and reaching for you, screaming your name? Why do I dream about us laughing together? I remember wanting to go home so badly I could hardly stand it, but I had to stay, for you. Did you make me?”

 

Steve feels like he’s sinking through the ground. He can’t breathe. He needs to form words, to say something, but he can’t make his mouth move, and anyway what would he say? “ _Sorry, Buck, you stayed in Hell with me and fought just because I asked you to, and then I left you to die alone in the wilderness and didn’t even bother to come back for the body”_?

 

Bucky is glaring at him from the other side of the room, but he slowly lowers the gun from his own temple. Steve prays briefly that Bucky will just shoot him and be done with it, but he shifts to his feet and holds the gun at his side instead. He grabs his backpack off of the table and tosses it to Steve, who catches it more by reflex than anything else.

 

“Why did I take all this shit?” Bucky growls as he moves back to his seat on the floor by the record player. Steve peers into the bag-- there are at least three packs of cigarettes, and an array of other things stuffed in underneath them. He takes them out and puts them on the table, then glances at Buck for permission to continue. He doesn’t react at all, so Steve pulls out the rest of the contents of the bag too and lines it all up on the table. There are some changes of clothes, a brightly colored pair of sunglasses, and a hat— Bucky’s disguises. Then, he puts some bottled water on the table, followed by a pen and a lighter and several combat knives. Steve’s hand shakes as he pulls the last few things out of the bag: a can of SPAM, a box of crackers, a pack of gum, a tin of instant coffee. He stares at them all lined up. He can hardly breathe.

 

“That’s--” Steve’s voice cracks, so he clears his throat, takes a deep breath, and then tries again, “These are some of the things you’d get in a K-ration, Buck. Stuff we lived off in the war.”

 

“World War Two,” Bucky says, still staring at Steve expressionlessly.

 

“Yeah, pal,” Steve can’t keep his voice from wavering. _Don’t cry don’t cry don’t you dare cry_ , “that’s right. World War Two.”

 

They sit quietly for another long while, Steve blinking back tears. He can’t bear to look at Bucky, or anything on the table-- evidence of just how much they’ve both lost. ( _Because of me._ ) Christ, Bucky couldn’t even remember which _war_ they’d fought in. He’d bought a biography of his _own damn life._ He’d lost everything-- he probably couldn’t remember his sisters, his Ma-- Hell, Steve remembered Bucky saying that after the war was done he would eat his own foot before he ever took another bite of SPAM, and there it was sitting on the table. He’d probably been _living_ off it. Steve took a deep shuddering breath. He wouldn’t cry. He didn’t have any right to cry, especially not in front of Bucky. Bucky, who was still staring at him with a contemplating expression. Steve saw the moment something occurred to him, the vague intrigue in his eyes, and he braced himself for another painful question as Bucky leans forward with a grave face:

  


“Do you know how they get the cars inside of the mall?”


	4. It's Been a Long, Long Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is another song from 1945

They spend the whole day talking. Steve can answer most of the questions that Bucky has, but not all of them, so he shows Bucky his phone and how to use Google. He regrets it almost immediately when Bucky snatches the phone from him and proceeds to ignore him completely for a few hours.

 

He can’t _really_ bring himself to regret it, though. He can’t bring himself to feel much more than absolutely blessed, getting to sit here and be ignored by Bucky. After a few minutes of Googling, Buck puts the gun down and starts to rummage around on the table for a cigarette. He holds the pack and absently tries to remove one all with one hand so he doesn’t have to put the phone down, and Steve can’t suppress the grin on his face. He shuffles forward slowly, hands up to try to avoid startling the other man, but is delighted when Bucky continues to ignore him completely.

 

Buck allows him to take the pack from him and pull one out (Steve resists the urge to let their fingers brush together as he hands it over) and then he grunts and gestures to the table with it. Steve doesn’t even breathe while he picks up the lighter and slowly brings it towards Buck’s face, but Bucky allows him to light the cigarette like it’s no big deal, and he doesn’t say a word when Steve stays sat next to him instead of moving back to his spot across the room.

 

Bucky puts the phone down briefly a while later, so that he can grab his pen and Steve’s biography. He balances the book on his knees and starts making notes on the blank end papers. Steve jumps again at the opportunity to be helpful—

“Buck, do you want a notebook? I have a few, I write in one too,”— and he’s over the moon when Bucky glances up at him and nods.

 

He’s back in seconds, holding it out, and he grins even wider when Bucky lets him help get him settled— he hands Steve the cigarette for a second and balances the phone on one knee and the small notepad on the other, then pauses and frowns down at the arrangement. Steve blinks and finds himself holding the phone instead, Bucky with the cig in his mouth and holding the notepad up like he’s about to conduct an interview.

“Automatic transmission, car,” he says to Steve (clearly, like he’s dictating or talking to Siri, and Steve immediately resolves to never tell him about Siri), and he nods towards the phone.

 

They spend another few hours with Bucky chain-smoking and listing things for Steve to look up, and Steve dutifully reading the Wikipedia pages back to him. Steve feels like the luckiest search engine of all time. At around 1800h, he snaps out of it and realizes that he’s absolutely starving, and that he has no idea when (or _what_ ) Bucky last ate.

 

“I’m gonna make something to eat, alright Buck?” Bucky doesn’t look up at him, but he grunts in acknowledgement and holds his real hand out for the phone.

 

He opens all of the cabinets and the refrigerator and stares forlornly around him. His friend has been living off of SPAM and cigarettes, and Steve doesn’t even have anything decent to feed him.

 

Steve sighs and closes the fridge, and then re-opens it and stares blankly into it some more. He could barely feed himself, how was he supposed to…

 

He hears a soft chuckle behind him, and he freezes. A metal hand claps down onto his shoulder.

“Don’t hurt yourself, Stevie.” His accent was thicker than Steve had heard it since they were kids. Steve must be having a psychotic breakdown. _This isn’t happening_.

 

He lets Bucky steer him onto one of the stools lined up at the island, reeling. _Stevie?_

He watches as Buck scans the cabinets methodically and then turns back to the open fridge. Bucky pulls a big pot that Steve didn’t even know he had from one of the lower cabinets and throws some roughly chopped potatoes, carrots, and a hunk of beef into it, while Steve struggles to scrape his jaw up off the ground. He pours some water into the pot and sets it to boil on the stove. He’s _humming_. His eyes are unfocused and kind of glossy, but he’s _humming._ He wanders back out into the living room for another cigarette, still humming, and then meanders back in to find something to stir his “soup” with.

Steve spares about half a second thinking about how absolutely disgusting that is going to be (neither him or Buck were ever exactly five star chefs, he was being honest when he told Sam they used to boil _everything_ , but Steve’s gotten used to the future’s frozen meals and take-out) but he literally could not give less of a shit about that. ( _Can’t be worse than SPAM,_ he thinks hysterically, _that meat was organic_ ) He was trying to remember the song that Buck was humming, it was so familiar— _Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, holy hell._ He’d have to remind Bucky to look that one up later. He didn’t want to risk snapping him out of… whatever this was. Steve couldn’t help the stupid look he knew was on his face as he watched Buck pull a neat little spin that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a dance hall and pull a few beers out of the fridge. He popped both caps with a metal thumb, set one on the counter next to Steve, and headed back into the living room with the other.

 

Steve sat perfectly still and listened as he put a new record on. Billie Holiday. He heard Buck flop down on the couch, and he could imagine him tipping his head back, stretching his legs out, like he always used to in the evenings after work. Steve sat and let his beer get warm, and heard Bucky flip the record, then put on a new one (Bing Crosby).

 

Eventually, Bucky came back into the kitchen, and poured the soup into two bowls. He brought one over to Steve and sat next to him at the counter. Steve opened his mouth to say, “Thanks, Buck,” but he cut himself off when he saw the look on Bucky’s face.

 

He was staring at the food like he’d never seen it before, and when he looked up at Steve his eyes were clouded with confusion and what looked almost like fear. _Shit_. Maybe Steve should have snapped him out of it, maybe it was selfish to let him zone out like that just because Steve wanted to pretend they were still in 1937 for a little while— but he didn’t have the luxury to beat himself up about it right now, because the panic was becoming clearer on Bucky’s face and he needed to fix this _right the fuck now._

 

“We used to eat this kind of stuff all the time,” Steve said, trying to project a calm that he didn't feel into his voice. “When we lived together, starting in the late 1930s after my Ma died until the war started in ‘41. We boiled pretty much everything, and usually you would insist on doing it because I burned everything all the time.”

Bucky seemed like he was starting to calm down, so Steve kept talking.

“You— I don’t know if you remember, but you were humming earlier—” Bucky shook his head. “You were humming Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. I can’t carry much of a tune, but I can try, or I can play it on my phone for you if you’d like?” Bucky hesitated, but nodded jerkily, and Steve was off like a shot to grab his phone from the other room. He got Bucky’s notebook and pen, too, and placed them next to his bowl. “I thought you might like to write it down,” he said, and waited calmly while Bucky, clearly still in somewhat of a fog, flipped it open and pressed the pen to the paper. He looked back up at Steve without writing anything.

“Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” Steve repeated. “And you put on two records: Billie Holiday and Bing Crosby. They’re singers.” He watches Bucky write the names down in careful print, and under that, “boiled food?”

Steve found the song on YouTube, and set his phone down on the table.

“Let’s eat, huh, pal?”

 

* * *

 

 

Steve only convinced Bucky to stay the night by showing him the bathroom, with its lockable door and window to the fire escape. Bucky stared at him blankly, and then stared into the room with the same blank expression, but he took the blanket and pillow Steve offered him and locked himself in.

 

Steve, who is not panicking, cleans the dishes and puts dinner away. Then he cleans the kitchen, and then the rest of the apartment. He orders groceries online, puts in a load of laundry, and then cancels the grocery order because he’s not sure how Bucky would react to a stranger coming to the door.

 

He makes a list of things from home that Bucky might want to be reminded of, then makes a list of things that Bucky might like to eat (separated into two categories: future food and familiar food), then makes a list of future things that he always thought Bucky might find neat. He puts the laundry in the dryer and goes through his closet looking for clothes that Bucky might like to wear, because he only had the one pair of jeans and a few t-shirts. He makes a little pile— sweatpants, and a hoodie, and two of his Henleys, plus some nice fuzzy socks. He makes another list, things Bucky might like to get, which so far is just “those little rubber bands Natasha uses in her hair”.

 

He folds his laundry and puts it away, and sits down on the couch to murmur about a hundred panicked Hail Marys to himself. (He studiously ignores the way that his faith in God seems to directly correlate with his proximity to Bucky.) He falls asleep at around 0400h.

“Pray for us sinners,” he mouths, his head slumping back,

_Now and at the hour of our death._

 

* * *

 

 

“I’m leaving”

 

Steve is awake and on his feet before he can process what’s going on. Bucky is standing in front of him, bag slung over his shoulder and sunglasses perched on top of his head. The coffee table is empty. The sun hasn't even fully risen yet.

 

_No._

 


	5. There's so much I feel that I should say

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is a line from the song "It's Been a Long, Long Time," which was the last chapter title.

“You can’t stop me from going.”

 

“I know, Buck. I know that.”

 

Rogers was holding his hands out like The Soldier was a wild animal. He had a habit of doing that when he thought The Soldier was doing something particularly un-Barnes-like.

“I’m taking this.” The Soldier raised Roger’s phone and waved it a little, then slid it into his pocket. Rogers seemed to calm slightly, which was a strange reaction to being robbed.

 

“Ok,” he sounded relieved.

“Ok,” The Soldier repeated. He took a step backwards towards the bathroom, away from Rogers with his big dumb sad eyes, “I’m leaving now.”

 

“Wait!”

 

“What.” This was starting to piss him off.

 

“Let me come with you.”

 

_What?_

 

“You came here for a reason, Buck. You can’t have asked me everything that you need to know yet. We had whole lives, pal, there’s a lot to remember. I just want to help.”

 

This was… unexpected. Rogers had a base of operations here, and allies, and a whole bunch of records and everything. Why would he leave? The Soldier hadn’t even said where they were going. Fuck, The Soldier didn’t _know_ where they were going. It’s strategically the worst plan he’s ever heard.

... _that sounds about right_.

 

He remembers yesterday— the way Steve ignored threats to his own person, but stopped cold when The Soldier turned the gun on himself. He clearly meant The Soldier no harm. In fact, Steve had shown him how to find answers, and given him a notebook, and when The Soldier lost time he was there afterwards to report what he had done.

  


And he knew _why_ he had done them.

 

It really wasn’t that hard of a decision after all.

 

* * *

  


Sam was getting dressed to meet Steve for their morning run when he got a phone call from the man himself. Dude sounded weird.

 

Well, weirder than usual.

 

“Sam, hey, I can’t make it today,” he was trying real hard to make himself sound casual. What an idiot.

 

_‘Hi, Steve, how are you? I’m great, thanks for asking.’ Asshole._

 

“If you’ve been kidnapped and need Natasha and I to come save you, cough twice.” Sam knew that if Steve had really been kidnapped he would sound much calmer than he did. The guy saved all of his panic for personal issues. And Sam had a pretty strong idea of which personal issue in particular this call was going to be about.

 

“Nope! No, no kidnappings, everything’s fine, I just... met someone. And we’re going on vacation.”

 

“You met someone.” Two guesses who ‘someone’ is.

 

“Yep!”

 

Steve had clearly either vastly overestimated his own ability to lie or he thought that Sam was a total idiot. He decided to play along and see how well this story had been thought out. “Like, a girl?”

“Uh… uh huh.” Ok, that answers that, Steve is talking out of his ass. They should make him take some improv classes or something, this is brutal.

“And you’re going on vacation together”

“...yes.”

“What’s her name?”

“uh, Bu-Beth. Wil..liams. Beth Williams”

“Wow Steve, that sounds an awful lot like you just mashed your old pal Bucky’s name with my last name because those were the first two that popped into your head. Is that really your final answer, or do you want to try again?”

“Nope, no, she’s real and I— uh— think she’s real swell, and we’re going on a road trip I’ll be back later—“

“Can I talk to her?”

“She’s not around right now”

“Do you have any pictures?”

“No not yet, uhh...”

“Well, does she have a Facebook? Instagram?”

“No, she’s uh— she’s—“

“Wow Steve, it sure sounds like you found someone who’s as much of an old man as you are.” Steve’s panicked ‘everything is fine’ laughter was almost painful to listen to.

“You mean old woman, Sam. I told you her name is uh... Beth.” _Did he really just forget the fake name he gave me literally seconds ago?_

“Uh huh. And you’re sure 'Beth' isn’t around for me to say hi to? Maybe the two of you can call me back from the road?”

 

There’s a scuffle, the sound of the phone being dropped and a muffled argument between two distinctly male voices (“you’re a terribly spy, Rogers” “I’m a soldier, not a spy, and— hey! Ow!”). There are a few more thuds before Steve picks up the phone again, sounding guilty.

“Sorry, Sam.” Sam wished he could ask, ‘ _Sorry for lying’, or ‘sorry for housing an international fugitive/ex-nazi assassin/the guy who ripped the steering wheel out of your car with his bare hands’?_

 

Instead he said,

“So, 'Beth', huh?”

“I’ve got it under control.”

“It sure sounds like it.” Steve doesn’t say anything for a long while. “You sure you got it? He’s not the guy you knew.”

“I- I know that.”

“Do you? ...listen, Steve, he’s gonna need a bigger support system than just you. That’s not fair to either of you. There’s no shame in asking for help—and besides, you aren’t a licensed therapist.”

“Neither are you”

“No, I’m not. That’s why I think that bringing him in is probably the best solution for everyone.” There was no way Steve would listen to reason on this one, but Sam had to at least suggest it. Maybe there would be a miracle.

“You know why I can’t let that happen, Sam.”

Sam sighed. “There’s nothing I can say, is there.”

“No.”

_Yeah, that’s what I thought._

“Alright man, just… be careful. You know where to find me if you need me.” Sam felt abruptly like a mom whose philosophy was ‘I don’t want you to drink, but if you do and you need a ride just call me and I promise I won’t yell at you,”

or maybe a summer camp counselor with an open door policy.

 

“Thanks, Sam.” The naked relief in Steve’s voice made Sam feel kinda like an asshole, but he just couldn’t imagine this ending well. Hopefully Steve would be a calm, rational adult, and for once things would work out without too much crying and bloodshed.

 

 

 

Man, they were all so screwed. 

* * *

 

It took Steve about 10 minutes to be ready to abandon everything he had built for himself in the 21st century. He brushed his teeth, grabbed his go bag from the closet, and did a last loop of his apartment to make sure he wasn’t forgetting anything. His laptop went in the bag, as did all the food in the kitchen that didn’t need to be heated or anything— mostly fruit and protein bars, plus a few bags of weird future snacks that he kept meaning to try.

 

Then he packed a smaller second bag and met Bucky in the kitchen.

 

Bucky was holding one of his travel coffee mugs in either hand, and he thrust one towards Steve with a glare. Steve didn’t take it personally— it seemed like Bucky nowadays had two settings: angry and in a sort of fugue state. Steve was delighted to see anything that seemed like a conscious emotion.

“Thanks, Buck!”

His glare deepened at Steve’s chipper attitude, which in turn made Steve’s grin widen. They stood in a bizarre staring contest until Bucky grunted and turned, marching out of the kitchen.

 

Steve tried to suppress the skip in his step as he followed.

 

Even he could tell that it didn’t really work.

 

Outside Steve’s apartment, Bucky led him to a junker. Steve peered into the window, and yep— definitely stolen, definitely hotwired. The thing looked like it might fall to pieces in a stiff breeze.

 

“Hey, Buck?”

He glared at Steve.

“Funny thing about being a superhero— I’ve got about a hundred times more money than I know what to do with.”

The glare deepened. Steve was smiling so wide it was starting to hurt his face.

“Feel like going shopping?”

 

* * *

 

Bucky insisted that they go to a used car lot instead of a dealership, and that they pay in cash (which meant a stop at the bank first). It was probably some spy shit. Steve wasn’t worried about it. Whatever made Bucky feel safe. And besides, he had enough depression-era thrift left in him that dropping more than a few thousand dollars ( _a few thousand, Christ)_ would have caused Steve physical pain.

 

So, a few hours later, they were on the highway headed west out of DC in a sturdy black pickup with the suspension jacked up to high heaven. Steve had a whole lot of questions, and he wasn’t about to ask any of them.

 

 _Bucky has been doing this,_ he reminded himself. _This is all he was doing for the past week and a half. He knows what he’s doing._

_Probably._

 

He was going to wait until he was asked before he offered any advice.

 

He _was._

  


Ok, he was at least going to wait a day or two. See what Bucky’s routine was.

  


So, he didn’t say anything, and Bucky drove until it got dark, and then he kept driving, and then at around 2200h he pulled into a rest stop and parked.

Neither of them said anything, they just sort of stared at each other for a minute.

 

“Did you want to get some food or something, Buck?”

He shook his head.

“Uh… oh, are we— is this it, for the night?”

A nod.

“Ok, ok, that’s fine Buck” Steve tried extra hard to keep his face neutral and non-judgemental. 

They stared at each other until Bucky arched an eyebrow at him.

“Well, it’s just— I saw a sign for a motel at this exit. It’s fine, whatever you want to do, I can pay for it of course or we can just… sleep here” _There goes the ‘let Bucky call the shots’ idea._

“No ID” Bucky’s voice was gruff from disuse again.

“Oh! Oh, that’s no problem,” Yes! Steve could help with that! He kept himself from doing a stupid little dance or punching the air, but only just. There really was a reason for him to be here, thank God. “Hang on,” he mumbled, searching through his go bag, “Aha!”

He pulled out the ziplock bag Natasha gave him and showed Bucky the contents: two sets of fake drivers licenses and passports for Steve (under the names “Roger Buchanan” and “Grant Barnes,” because she hates him) and, because Steve had insisted, one of each for Bucky too (“James Madison Rogers”-- Steve didn't come up with that one either). Steve tried to suppress his blush, but it definitely didn’t work— especially when Bucky read the names and raised that eyebrow again. He didn’t comment, though, instead he just restarted the car and headed over to the motel.

 

Steve was suddenly and incredibly thankful that he’d checked their fake documents ahead of time and had the forethought to get rid of the ones labeling them Mr. and Mr. Barnes-Rogers.

 

* * *

 

Bucky made Steve stay in the car while James Madison Rogers rented them a room. He wasn’t nervous the entire time that Bucky was gone. That would be ridiculous. Buck could handle himself, and Steve could handle letting him out of sight for five minutes. He was just jittery from… being in the car all day. Yep. Final answer.

 

So Steve definitely wasn’t massively relieved when he saw Bucky walking calmly back from the front office, holding two key cards. He scrambled to gather both of his bags (Bucky was already carrying his own) and practically fell out of the truck. Bucky didn’t acknowledge him at all, which was more than fine with Steve, who trailed after him like an imprinted duckling anyway.

 

Their room was a total shithole by 21st century standards, but was practically the Ritz-Carlton compared to some of the places they’d stayed as young men (and then the sometimes-literally-holes-in-the-ground later as soldiers). Hell, Steve still felt lucky anywhere with hot water and relatively clean sheets. Steve plopped his bags down on the bed closest to the door and waited for Bucky to finish his sweep of the room.

 

He figured Buck was done when he lit a cigarette and unpacked his notebook and Steve’s phone. Before he could get lost for a few hours googling shit, Steve cleared his throat softly.

 

“Hey, Buck?” He had felt confident for most of the day that he was doing the right thing, but suddenly Steve felt almost sheepish.

 

Bucky didn’t respond verbally (Steve wasn’t really expecting him to anymore) but he did make brief eye contact, which was more than good enough.

“I brought some stuff I thought you might like,” he said with a small smile, holding the second bag that he packed out, and then setting it on the other bed when Bucky made no move to take it from him directly.

 

He watched with greedy eyes and that undeterrable grin (he hadn’t smiled so much since… hell, maybe since his Ma died)  as Bucky pulled the objects out one by one and spread them out over the top of his mattress.


	6. The Loneliness After

The Soldier is realizing more and more that Rogers is kind of a weird guy.

 

He had this whole bag of stuff ready to give to The Soldier before he knew that he would be coming back. Because it was all clearly intended for The Soldier. When did he _get_ this stuff?

 

The first things he pulled out were soft, warm clothes. The Soldier had never been given anything with the sole purpose of comfort, and he certainly had never purchased things for himself with that in mind. But here they were.

 

Next came the weapons. This was a surprise to The Soldier— he had assumed the presents were going to be things that Barnes had liked, to try to jog his memory. And he knew (he didn’t know how, of course he didn’t) that Rogers avoided using guns himself, so he must have acquired these specifically for The Soldier. They were decent— there was a rifle, several additional handguns, plus throwing knives and a garrote and small glowing blue devices which Rogers assured him were better than a taser. He had small tracking devices now too, and cameras and microphones and tripwires so that he could form a more secure perimeter. He stopped digging through his presents to do so, making sure that he would know if anyone headed towards their room or messed with the truck. He could feel Roger’s big dumb eyes on him and the big dumb grin on his face as The Soldier pressed tracking devices onto one of his shoes, the shield and the back of his phone (which had been grudgingly returned). He clearly _wanted_ The Soldier to be able to find him. Idiot.

 

“How do I…” he mumbled at Rogers, gesturing towards the trackers. The blond pulled a white box out of the bag of gifts and passed it over.

“They’ll connect to this,” he explained, visibly trying to tone his smile down. He glanced back up at The Soldier— “It’s a modified starkphone. Untraceable, but you can google with it, or listen to music, or… I think there’s games?” He trailed off and handed the box over.

Inside there was a sleek little black rectangle, identical to Steve’s, plus a cord that plugged into the wall to charge it and some other cords that Steve said he could stick into his ears to listen to music with.

 

Neat.

 

 _I wonder if I could charge something with The Arm_.

 

That would be neat too.

 

He set the phone up to charge (the regular way through the wall outlet) and turned back to the bag.

 

There was some other new technology— another pair of headphones, but this time huge ones that looked like earmuffs (“the other ones can be uncomfortable to get used to” Steve explained sheepishly), and a thing that looked basically like a bigger version of the phone.

 

“It’s— here.” Steve reached for it, and then poked around on the screen for a second. He turned it around to show the screen to The Soldier. He couldn’t really see from this distance, and Rogers couldn’t see the screen anymore either.

 

This was dumb.

 

The Soldier stood and plopped himself down on the bed next to Steve.

 

Steve was visibly taken aback, and his big dumb grin was creeping back onto his face.

 

Ugh.

 

“What is it,” The Soldier growled,

“Right! Right. It’s a tablet. Like the phone, but bigger.” The Soldier stared at him. _Do you think that I’m stupid._ Steve stutters a little bit more, and then shows him the point of the ‘tablet’— he’s preloaded videos onto it. There are Black and white videos of people dancing, modern footage of fully automated factories, documentaries about history and wildlife and space. There are a good dozen movies and TV shows with the word “Star” in the name, which Steve explains that he hasn’t seen either, but thought that ‘Bucky’ might like them based off of what people said about them. There are also “Apps” like on his phone— listening to Rogers talk about this stuff is like listening to an Alien reading Wikipedia. The Soldier had been briefed when he was thawed, he understood the basics of future technology. He wasn’t about to tell Steve, but he knew that YouTube was very much not “like Google for videos” (most of Steve’s explanations for things were just comparing it to Google, and The Soldier was a little worried that Steve’s introduction to the internet seems to have started and ended with the search engine. What, did they just let him _click on stuff?_ Even Hydra had had a better plan than “here’s Google, go nuts.”)

 

The Soldier tried to put on a human expression that meant “thank you very much for this space technology, please stop trying to explain it to me,” but smiling made Rogers look like he was gonna cry, so he quickly put the tablet down and pulled the next thing out of the bag.

 

After that, the gifts were much more like what he’d thought they’d be, although he liked them more than he thought he would.

Especially the pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes, which Steve was very proud of. “I had a hell of a time finding ‘em, Buck,” he grinned, “you used to love ‘em, they’re not _that_ different in the future. Here, this goes with,” he held up a little black rectangle with a hinge in the middle, which he flicked open and shut as a demonstration. _That’s a damn lighter, finally, get rid of that plastic shit_.

 

There were his dog tags, or maybe a replica of them. He left those in the bag.

 

There were a few books: Armageddon 2419 A.D., The Hobbit, Triplanetary, and Foundation. There were also about forty pages of printer paper stapled together— the packet was titled “So you missed 70 years: a super soldier’s guide to what you can no longer say in polite company (also what you _can_ say now, and— most importantly— _these words mean different things in the future and people will laugh at you)”_

 

In the bottom of the bag, there were big plastic sacks of Tootsie Rolls and M&Ms.

 

So Rogers’ gifts weren’t too bad overall.

* * *

 

 

The issue is that Bucky didn’t just go to sleep in ‘45 and wake up in 2012. Steve wasn’t there for his whole life, no matter what he wishes were true. There are things that happened to Bucky that Steve can’t help with. There are days where all Steve can do is watch his six, and drive— Bucky on his worst days needs to keep his head down and keep moving. Buck has flashbacks that nobody can explain: the boiling desert sun, marching for days through a jungle swamp, holding a gun to a child’s temple. He wakes Steve up in the night sometimes and— _Steve, did I kill the fucking president?_ And all Steve can say is “I don’t know, Buck, I’m sorry”

He wakes Steve up in the night and says “ _Who the fuck was Howard Stark_ ”

He wakes Steve up, “ _If they come back promise me you’ll put me down.”_

 

Steve never really knows what to say to that.

* * *

 

“Death That Need Not Have Been”

 

 

 

> “I feel the loneliness after death
> 
> Death that need not have been—
> 
> I hear the screech of brakes,
> 
> And see the muddy shoes removed,
> 
> Lying beside the still form,
> 
> The too-quick boy,
> 
> Covered with hempen bags,
> 
> Flies gathering
> 
>  
> 
> It makes the heart sick
> 
> As an old mood upsets the morning sky;
> 
> Or stills the heart
> 
> As does the shriek of wind through chimneys,
> 
> Through old cellars,
> 
> Through attics,
> 
> Through windows,
> 
> Rattling through insecure windows.
> 
>  
> 
> I feel the loneliness after death
> 
> Death that need not have been—
> 
> I hear the muffled cry of millions,
> 
> The battle shriek in martial music;
> 
> I hear the scream of bombs
> 
> And see the small feet flying,
> 
> Fear-whitened faces staring,
> 
> Huddled in death,
> 
> Death that need not have been.”

_Flora Hendricks_

 


	7. Just Like You Always Do

They have their first incident 20 miles north of Jackson, Tennessee.

 

Buck hadn’t been sleeping so well in the motels, despite the weapons and the cameras and microphones and Steve keeping watch, so they were spending the night in the car, parked at a rest stop. They’d laid down in the back of the truck— sleeping would’ve been impossible in the cramped cabin— but when Steve startled awake in the early hours of the morning, he was alone.

 

He continued to take slow, measured breaths that were hopefully vaguely similar to the way he’d been breathing while asleep. It was a technique that would pretty much only work on an idiot— a Hydra goon, or mugger, or something, not Natasha or Sam (probably), and it certainly wouldn’t fool Bucky (not the Winter Soldier, and certainly not his childhood best friend) — but he did it anyway.

He told himself that it was _nothing_ like the deep breathing exercises that Sam tried to get him to do sometimes. He didn’t need to be doing any kind of exercises, the whole thing was ridiculous. He didn’t have shell-shock or _post-traumatic stress disorder_ (he still just couldn’t get used to how _weird_ everyone talked in the future) or any other fucking thing. He was fine.

  


But maybe he could mention the breathing exercises to Bucky. Would that be helpful? He had done next to nothing for him so far, he was just following him around for his own peace of mind. Bucky would probably be doing much better if he would just find the right way to help, but he didn’t know what it was. And everything he’s thought of has been so _stupid_ , Christ, did he really think some old novellas and a pack of Lucky Strikes would help? What a fucking idiot!

And where _was_ he? Steve had been awake for almost five minutes and he hadn’t heard a thing. He was sure Bucky was sitting on the ground— next to the front passenger door, probably, on the farthest side from the streetlight to keep himself in the shadow. He would know Steve was awake by now, obviously.

 _I’m not going to go look for him_ , he took a deep, slow breath. _He needs space._

 _Space is healthy_ , he reminded himself, slowly shuffling towards the passenger’s side. _You need to give him space and time to heal._

  


And he _was going to do that_ , he thought, reaching over his body with his left hand to hold onto the side of the truck bed, _I’m just going to check that he’s there real quick and then he can have all the time and space that there is,_ and he lifted up and rotated himself in one smooth motion to peer over the edge and Bucky was--

 

Bucky wasn’t--

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Ok_

 

Steve is lying in the fully-reclined passenger’s seat and he is _absolutely_ doing those stupid breathing exercises from Sam, but he is also _not panicking._

 

It’s been about three hours since he noticed Bucky was gone.

 

His plan is to stay in place until further notice. He knows that Bucky would find him if he wanted to, even if Steve did move-- Buck had taken his phone, at least, and Steve had kept himself from trying to contact him so far. _He’ll reach out if he needs you._

 

He hopes.

  


_Ok, we can do this,_ he thought, _just find something to do._

 

Right.

 

He looked around. Buck’s sunglasses were sitting on the dash, bracketed by cigarette butts and the growing pile of books— the two biographies, plus Steve’s clumsy contributions— and on top of those were a paper map of the southeastern US and Bucky’s notebook.

 

In the first ten minutes after he noticed that Bucky was gone, Steve had looked through the whole pile (except for Bucky’s notebook) checking to make sure there hadn’t been any clues left for him. He scanned the books, not really reading but checking to see if anything was handwritten in them. There were notes in the margins of the biographies, but he was sure Bucky wouldn’t have left him a message in some kind of code. He was pretty sure Bucky-in-the-future thought he was an idiot. If there was a clue, it would be painfully obvious.

He unfolded and scoured the map.

 

He didn’t find anything, of course not, but it took him nearly ten minutes to refold the damn map without accidentally shredding it. He scoured the cabin again, then reached back for his own biography.

 

Eventually, after he had read all of the books in their entirety, crumpled the poor map to near-illegibility, and had begun to think about whether or not he would be able to (legally or otherwise) access the rest stop’s security camera, he had to admit to himself that Bucky hadn’t left anything for him. Bucky wanted to be left alone.

 

So he had reclined his seat as far as it went, and pulled up some music on his phone before sticking it speaker-up in the cup holder. He lit a cigarette but he didn’t bother to smoke it, he just held it over the second cup holder to catch the ash and let the smoke fill the air. He had a playlist of his favorite records that he liked to listen to to try and decompress, a habit he’d developed in the future. He usually listened to it after missions, or while he ran. Sometimes he played the albums on the real phonograph, late at night when the quiet of his apartment drove him crazy.

It was strange to listen to it again knowing that Bucky was still alive.

 

He closed his eyes and leant his head back, and eventually the playlist ended and the cigarette in its’ makeshift ashtray went out.

  
  
  


And that brought him to now.

 

There was nothing else in the truck except for a few protein bars and their bags of guns and dirty clothes.

 

He imagined what his Ma, or Peggy, or even Sam and Natasha would do to him if they saw how he was living. He was sure that Bucky would be back soon, but then what? They keep living in this truck driving around the country and eating shitty fast food indefinitely?

  


Ok, so yeah, probably, but that doesn’t mean they have to live in _squalor_.

 

* * *

 

 

Steve’s first stop is Walmart, where he picks up a pair of sleeping bags, some other basic camping supplies, and a few bags of chips— he and Bucky had been working through all the weird future snacks they could find (Buck honestly didn’t seem too excited about it, but Steve was absolutely set on trying to have a little bit of fun.) He stashed everything on the little bench behind the seats, on top of the bags they already had.

Next stop was a laundromat, and then a grocery store, and then back to the rest stop. He was gonna give Buck a little bit to come back before he headed out— Bucky would be following him either way, he was sure (or at least, he really, really hoped), but for his own peace of mind he had to offer the ride just in case.

 

At around 1100h he checked his supplies one last time and then he pulled back onto 45, headed north.

 


	8. Blue Skies

Steve enjoyed driving. It was something he learned how to do after he woke up, mostly by observation. He’d never actually owned a driver’s license with his own legal name on it-- never had a reason to get one before the war, and since he woke up in the future he didn’t even have a birth certificate with his real name and age on it. _Maybe Nat will make me one. That’d be neat._

 

He was driving with the windows down and the radio playing (the hosts kept calling it an ‘oldies’ station, which of course meant that all of the music had been made 20 or 30 years after Steve died), wearing Bucky’s ugly lime green sunglasses. The wind from the open windows was nice, although it made him miss his bike. _Couldn’t exactly live in a motorcycle, though,_ he sighed to himself _, although one might fit in the back…_

 

He didn’t even hate the radio station, to be honest. It was alright. He could recognize most of the instruments, at least, and it didn’t sound as much like it was made by aliens as everything else did.

 

He had stopped to stretch his legs at a Starbucks and gotten a drink while he was there-- he wasn’t sure what it was, but the barista _(Rachel, who was saving up for nursing school, and was also very nice and non-judgemental about coffee milkshakes)_ assured him that it was whatever had the most calories (the serum was a literal lifesaver, but it also meant that he ate like he was back in the depression-- i.e. as much as possible of whatever he can get his hands on). There was chocolate, definitely, and also possibly caramel syrup, and maybe mint? And hazelnut? _Maybe he should go back and tip Rachel more_ , it seemed like she had dumped every sugar syrup they had back there in this. He took another sip and got a mouthful of straight chocolate sauce-- _maybe he should go back and give Rachel everything else in his wallet._

 

He hummed along to the radio (or, tried to. He’d never heard the song before) and shifted in his seat. The fresh air was nice— _look on the bright side,_ he thought, _at least you have a break from the world’s most prolific portable smokestack._ The sky was huge and open and robin’s egg blue. There were birds singing somewhere. It was all very nice. He smiled softly to himself.

 

“Do I need to be worried about the steering wheel?” He spoke at a normal volume, as if he was speaking to someone else in the car with him, although he turned his head slightly towards the open window. There, of course, was no response. Steve took a big sip of his milkshake and waited. He flicked through a few stations and then back to the first one. He was about to start trying to sing along (again, he had never heard the song before, but it would’ve worked out fine— all future music sounds the same and most of the words are “yeah”) when his enhanced hearing picked up a shuffle on the roof.

 

He kept his eyes on the road while Buck did some silent gymnastics and carefully lowered himself into the open passenger side window. When he finally let himself look over, Bucky was glaring at him.

 

“Since when does Captain America steal?” He leaned over and carefully plucked the sunglasses off of Steve’s face, settling them on his own.

 

“A friend gave those to me,”

 

“A thief _and_ a liar.”

 

“Look what I got you,” Steve was grinning, again, of course.  He tilted his head towards the cup holders, and Bucky drained half of his cup (black coffee— he hadn’t seen Bucky-in-the-future drink anything but water and black coffee) before Steve even registered that he’d picked it up. Steve laughed softly at him and kept his eyes on the road. He wasn’t going to ask how Bucky’d gotten on the roof of a truck going 80 down a deserted highway. He’d honestly been expecting it for about a hundred miles now. _Getting pretty predictable,_ _Buck_. Steve was pretty sure the coffee was even still warm

 

They were quiet for a while, as they watched the trees thin out and turn into farmland and then cluster back together in little islands.

 

“Where are we headed?” Buck spoke softly, his voice was gentle in a way Steve wasn’t sure he’d ever heard it before.

 

“Closest national park,” Steve tried to match his tone, but he wasn’t sure if it worked. He was definitely quieter than usual. His voice wasn't quite as soft and full of vague reverence as Buck’s; Steve’s emotional range went pretty much from ‘righteous anger’ to ‘moral rage’ and back, with a quick detour to ‘completely irrational’ whenever Bucky was involved. He could do the stage voice (which he still pulled out for talking on comms or giving one of the inspirational speeches that he keeps getting roped into somehow) and he could be annoyed and/or yell. He didn’t exactly have a setting for ‘nice calm small talk with your buddy where you don’t mention anything about his clear mental illness or the fact that he can and will disappear and reappear with absolutely no warning and you also don’t say anything weird to him about how nice his hair is or anything like that,’

 “It’s about another hour north, just across the Ohio river.”

 

“National park, huh? We doing a tour of our Nation’s beautiful landscape now, Captain America?”

 

This was the longest conversation that Bucky had had with him since 1945. And he was making  _jokes_ for christ's sake. 

_Quick say something funny and normal, don’t ruin it—_

 

“Well, that’s what happens when you let me make the itinerary unsupervised,” he laughed, “‘Man with a Plan’, and the plan is camping.”

 

_Shit, should I have not mentioned that he left? And why do I have to keep referencing stuff he doesn't remember goddamnit Steve_

 

“Camping, huh?” Buck looked at him out of the corner of his eye and took a sip of coffee to hide his smirk. His voice was low and rough, but rough like he just rolled out of bed, not rough like he’d spent the last day screaming and chain smoking. Steve quickly turned his eyes back to the road. _Is it hot in here all of a sudden? It feels hot._ Bucky looked good— better than he had when he’d left. He had a 5 o’clock shadow that looked almost intentional, and the bags under his eyes were gone. He looked well-rested. And wasn’t that something. _Maybe he would be better off without me_ , Steve couldn’t help but think as he traced that familiar profile with his eyes, but he knew even if it was true that he would never go anywhere Bucky couldn’t find him.

 

Bucky's slight smirk faded as he looked at Steve, and his face went a blank, bland sort of curious, like a pigeon trying to decide whether or not it can eat a particular piece of trash that it found in a gutter. Steve was having real trouble keeping his eyes on the road.

 

He looked different, of course, from when they were young. Not wrinkled, but scarred and aged with a certain wildness about him that never used to be there. In this moment, though, sitting in the sunlight with his dumb glasses and novelty t-shirt and his long hair whipping wildly around his head, Bucky looked…

 

Not at all like the man he used to be, but when he looked into Steve’s eyes like that it got harder and harder to care about the difference.

 

And then he smiled.

 

"Guess I could go for some camping."


	9. A Young Man Learns to Shoot

He’d been nervous to come back.

 

Nervousness was a new feeling for him. He was getting a lot of those lately. Sometimes it felt like every time he woke up The Soldier was a little bit more human, with a new feeling that he needed to learn to interpret. This morning, apparently, he’d been blessed with two: nervousness and guilt. It wasn’t hard to figure out why.

 

Leaving in the middle of the night the way he did was fucked up, he knew that. Steve deserved better.

 

But was that new? The Soldier was always going to do fucked up things, that was what he did. That was all he did.

He was the opposite of Steve the Paragon. Steve deserved better than being wordlessly abandoned in the dead of night, and The Soldier couldn’t give that to him. He should have stayed gone once he left, should have stayed far away from Steve. That had been the plan. He’d gotten a few answers, as many as he was likely to get, and there was no reason for him to haunt Steve any longer. It couldn’t be easy to be around the monster living in his dead best friend’s body, to talk to The Soldier as though he was just a regular man, someone deserving of compassion. He knew, even as he knew that he would never be able to truly leave Steve, that Steve would be better off without him.

 

The friendliest welcome The Soldier had dared to hope for was to not be shot straight through the roof as he clung to the top of the truck.

 

But Steve had been…

 

Honestly kind of great?

 

He’d taken everything in stride— no questions about where he’d been or why he left, and he didn’t even blink when The Soldier finally crawled off of the roof  and into the cab.

 

Now, in the light of the campfire, Steve looked like he’d stayed awake for several days and then been pushed down a large hill.

 

He was a handsome bastard, despite the bags under his eyes and the worry lines just beginning to crease his face. The Soldier watched as he speared a good ten hotdogs width-wise on a stick and then promptly stuck them directly into the fire.

 

Despite also having an enhanced metabolism, The Soldier only cooked himself one hotdog at a time, and he was carefully working his way through number 4 while he watched Steve try to extinguish the fire that had spread onto his stick and all his sausages.

 

He watched Steve stare down at his “cooking”, and The Soldier could see his thoughts as clearly as though they’d been written on the broad side of a barn— _I can eat that,_ Steve was obviously thinking, although his food was clearly mostly charcoal at this point. He could see Steve thinking _Well, what else are you gonna do with it? You’ve eaten worse._

 

His mind suddenly overflowed. He remembered being young and carving out the worst sections from half-rotten fruit, and vegetable scraps boiled in water for broth. He remembered Steve, pale and bedridden, and The Man The Soldier Was Once had knelt on the floor and pressed his face into a thin cold hand. He remembered the hollow ache of hunger, and he remembered seeing that same desperation reflected in the eyes of those around him— Steve’s, of course, but he saw strangers too: some soft pale faces set in dark curls.

 

He snapped from his haze and found himself kneeling on Steve’s right, carefully roasting Steve another dinner. Steve’s attempt was in the fire (The Soldier thought he must have had to snatch it from his hand to keep him from trying to eat it), and Steve was staring down at the hotdog in his hands that The Soldier must have already finished.

 

“That’ll get cold, pal,” he murmured, fishing another bun from the plastic bag, using it to yank the hotdog off the stick, and then holding it out to Steve.

 

Steve was sitting stock-still, just looking at him, his face solemn. It was the most grave he could ever remember seeing Steve, except for the time The Soldier had held himself at gunpoint.

 

Strange, considering no one was in immediate danger.

  
  


The Soldier scanned their surroundings again, quickly, just to make sure.

 

Steve carefully set his food to the side, eyes glued to The Soldier.

 

“You know where you are, Buck?” He asked. _Strange question_ , he thought— _maybe a test_? Steve knew where they were, obviously, having driven there, so it wasn’t asked in earnest. Perhaps he thought that The Soldier’s sense of direction was inadequate? In which case it would do to answer to the best of his ability, prove himself useful. The Soldier opened his mouth, then paused— perhaps the question wasn’t meant for him. _Buck,_ Steve had said, and The Soldier hadn’t been _Buck_ in a long time. What if this was somewhere Steve had been with James Buchanan Barnes, lifetimes ago, and he was hoping that The Soldier would be able to access those memories somehow? His mouth closed softly and he felt his brows draw down and together.

 

Steve leaned closer as The Soldier failed to respond, his face carefully neutral. “You’re in Shawnee National Forest. The year is 2014.” As he spoke, Steve raised his hands slowly, carefully displaying his palms to The Soldier to demonstrate his lack of weapons. “My name is Steve. We’ve known each other for a long time.”

 

It took The Soldier a long moment to parse that. _What the fuck does he think is happening right now?_

 

“Yes.” The Soldier responded. Steve was still looking at him with that bizarre serious expression. _Shit. Say something reassuring._ “...I know.”

 

_Damnit, Barnes, that’s not fucking reassuring._

 

They stared at each other for a long moment, while The Soldier tried to think of what a man would say in this situation.

 

Fortunately for The Soldier, Steve was only capable of so much patience.

“I thought— you were cooking for me.” The Soldier nodded but did not speak, instead waiting for Steve to finish his thought. “The last time that you cooked for me, back at the apartment, something happened. It upset you. You…”

 

“Went away,” The Soldier finished for him. Steve nodded.

 

The Soldier wished that that could be the end of the conversation, that he wouldn’t have to explain anymore, but he knew that was an impossible dream. This was Steve. It was a miracle he had let The Soldier go for so long before he demanded an explanation.

 

“I got lost in Barnes,” he mumbled, “I won’t again.”

 

 _Wrong thing to say._ Steve’s brow furrowed even deeper.

 

“Bu- I- You are Barnes, Bucky. That’s you. James Buchanan Barnes.” He reached out, clasping The Soldier’s flesh hand in both of his and squeezing softly.

 

The Soldier sighed and shook his head. “I may have been, once.” He took a deep breath and held onto Steve’s hands with his own. He had to get this right. It was important. The Soldier spared a second to regret that he was the one who had to try to break this to Steve, that it couldn’t have been someone who knew him, who could have been kind and nurturing and helped him heal. He shouldn’t have to hear this from the thing living inside his best friend’s corpse.

But there was nothing for it. He had to know. If he hated The Soldier afterwards, The Soldier would deal with that, but he couldn’t let Steve keep thinking that his best friend had returned from the dead. He looked him in the eye and worked to keep his voice steady.

 

“James Buchanan Barnes died a long time ago, Steve. I’m not him.”

 

* * *

 

 

“We Were All Odysseus in Those Days”

 

“A young man learns to shoot  
& dies in the mud  
an ocean away from home,  
a rifle in his fingers  
& the sky dripping  
from his heart. Next to him  
a friend watches  
his final breath slip  
ragged into the ditch,  
a thing the friend will carry  
back to America—  
wound, souvenir,  
backstory. He’ll teach  
literature to young people  
for 40 years. He’ll coach  
his daughters’ softball teams.  
Root for Red Wings  
& Lions & Tigers. Dance  
well. Love generously.  
He’ll be quick with a joke  
& firm with handshakes.  
He’ll rarely talk  
about the war. If asked  
he’ll tell you instead  
his favorite story:  
Odysseus escaping  
from the Cyclops  
with a bad pun & good wine  
& a sharp stick.  
It’s about buying time  
& making do, he’ll say.  
It’s about doing what it takes  
to get home, & you see  
he has been talking  
about the war all along.  
We all want the same thing  
from this world:  
Call me nobody. Let me live.”

 

Amorak Huey


	10. Call Me Nobody

_Ok, Rogers._

_You’ve done so many goddamn inspirational speeches._

_Now, you’ve gotta look your childhood best friend and the love of your life (who you already watched fall to his death, and mourned) in the eyes and explain to him that, despite what his mind is telling him, **he’s not dead.**_

He looked at Buck.

They were still holding their hands clasped between them. They were sitting in the dirt, facing each other, and his head was tilted down, so that his hair was falling into his face. It was dark but the fire was still lit, and Steve caught a glimpse of one dark eye, dancing in the firelight.

Bucky wasn’t looking at him. He was frowning down at their hands.

_Bucky, who, according to Bucky, isn’t._

Steve took a slow breath and a step back from the moment emotionally. He had an eidetic memory and perfect vision, and before that he’d had a fair amount of skill as an artist and an indefatigable childhood infatuation. He looked at Bucky.

His posture was crumpled forwards, and his brow was furrowed, but it was the same expression he’d worn when he’d heard about Steve’s Ma’s passing. It was more subtle, sure, but he was confident this wasn’t a stranger wearing his friend’s face. It didn’t matter what Bucky did or didn’t remember, he was the same man. He was. But how could Steve explain that?

_I know it’s you, Buck, you look at me just like you always have_

He couldn’t spring that one on him, not when Bucky didn’t remember anything. Not that there was anything to spring— _Hey Buck, I know you’ve been going through kind of a lot lately what with the decades of torture and everything, but do you want to have a chat about all of the meaningful eye contact we used to make?_

It wasn’t like Steve had ever had the balls to say anything about it. Maybe he’d blown the whole thing out of proportion in his head. Maybe Bucky had never felt the same. And anyway, none of that matters right now.

How many sensitivity training workshops had he sat through since waking up? He could do this.

 

“Ok,” he said.

Apparently-Not-Bucky was quiet for a long second, then he tilted his head up so that Steve could get a better look at his disbelieving glare. _Still such a flair for the dramatic._ Steve had to suppress a soft laugh. (What? Bucky or not, the guy was cute. Sue him.)

“Is there something else you want to be called?”

Not-Bucky blinked.

They sat for a minute, and listened to the fire and the birds and the bugs and whatever else was in the woods. After a while, the other man seemed to notice that they were holding hands still, and he promptly snatched them back. Steve raised his eyebrows, and leaned back onto his palms, waiting. He tried to act as casual as possible, and not make it obvious how much the skepticism kind of stung. Not-Bucky furrowed his eyebrows and leaned forward.

“You don’t understand,” he growled. “I know I have his face, but he is dead. Gone. He is never coming back.”

“Ok,” Steve said again, ignoring the part of himself screaming _but sometimes you remember_ — “I’m not sure what you’re really looking for here, pal. I started mourning Bucky in 1945. He’s dead. Ok.” Steve leaned in, wishing he could take the other man’s hands, but he had to follow his lead here— Not-Bucky was already tense and had leaned backwards to maintain the distance between them. “But what do we do now? What can I do for you?”

He looked almost affronted at the idea. “You don’t do _anything_ for me,” he spat, “you don’t know me. Congratulations, I’m out of your hair.”

Steve thought about that for a second.

 

“Once, when we were teenagers, Bucky tried to stop me from getting into a fight outside a bar and I punched him in the throat.”

The other man’s expression was somewhere between ‘why the fuck would you do that’ and ‘why the fuck are you telling me about it’.

“The first time we met, actually, I was in an alley with these two guys-”

“Why are you telling me this?” The other man interrupted.

“Look— I owed him. I owed him a fucking lot. He kept me alive more times than I can count. And then he died. And you don’t have to be him, you don’t have to remember a minute of it. But I gotta owe somebody, right?”   
He looked like he might interject again, so Steve barreled on. “If he had kids, I woulda owed them too. I paid for his sisters’ grandkids college tuition. I donate to charities that I think he’d like in his name,” (This month had been funding a few after school robotics clubs for underprivileged youth).

Steve made sure Bucky was looking him in the eyes for the last part.   
“Why would I do any less for you than I would do for, say, his grandson?”

The brunette huffs and visibly takes a second to think. His arm whirs inside the sleeve of his jacket and Steve can’t help but stare as the fabric twists slightly.   
Neat.

When Not-Buck is ready to talk again, he kind of has to get Steve’s attention, which is embarrassing. It’s just a little lean into Steve’s line of vision (he’d been staring off into the air over his left shoulder), but it jolts him out of his thoughts.

“What if I don’t want to see you?” he’s speaking louder and more confidently than he has since he… Steve wasn’t really sure what to call it. Found Steve and felt that he had to announce Bucky’s death like Steve was his next of kin back home? (He didn’t think widow). His words make Steve feel like he might vomit, but he forced a little smile onto his face.

“I hope you’ll take the car,” he choked out. “If you drop me off at the nearest airport, I can make a withdrawal at a bank for you on the way so you’ll have some cash, um,” he swallowed. It was hard to talk around the lump in his throat. “I think last time you left— I have your passport” he fumbled over his words, and turned away to look through the nearest bag, “It’s somewhere—“ he winced at the crack in his own voice, and wished that he could just stick his whole head in the bag, like an ostrich with its head in the sand.

Hell, suffocating himself in sand sounds pretty good right now too.

He feels a metal hand on his bicep and he freezes.   
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see a frown and a furrowed brow.

They sit in silence for another minute, then Steve gets a manly sort of clap on the shoulder from the metal arm, and Not-Bucky stands.

_That’s that then._

It shouldn’t be a surprise for Steve, the other man has been doing nothing but leave him over and over again since they met in the future, but everything in him sinks all at once.

He offers Steve a hand standing up, and then walks over to the passenger side of the truck and pops the door open.

_Oh._

 

He hadn’t realized they were going now.   
Guess he was driving.

 

  
Steve only made it a few steps towards the truck before the door slammed shut again, and Bucky was headed back towards him with a sleeping bag in each hand.

  
_Huh?_

“Wanna do the ground or the truck bed?”

Steve opened his mouth to try and answer, then his brain registered the question and sort of turned into tv static.

Not-Bucky quickly realized he wasn’t going to get an answer, so he started unrolling the bags into the truck bed.

  
When Steve looked, the other man was sitting propped up against the rear windshield writing in a notebook. He walked over and leaned against the side of the truck. “So, you’re staying?”

He nodded without looking up.

“What made you change your mind?” He murmured.

The other man flicked his eyes up to Steve’s. “I believe you. When you say you don’t need me to be him.”

Steve feels relief flood his system like a morphine drip. “I just want to help.”

He nods, still examining Steve carefully.  
There’s a glint in his eye that Steve can’t translate. “You can call me James,” he smirks, and Steve ignores the part of his head that draws lines between that tone and the voice Bucky used to use on girls.   
“James?” He echoes faintly. _Wasn’t he just saying Bucky was dead?_

The other man pulls a card out of his wallet, and Steve feels himself go bright scarlet— it’s his fake ID. 

_James Madison Rogers._

He sticks out a hand to shake, and the dumb teasing grin on James’ face makes Steve so glad he has something to lean on. He’s a marvel of modern science, but without the support of the car his knees might have gone out.

“It’s good to meet you.” 


End file.
